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A relaxed mood swept through the menswear shows in Milan for Spring/Summer 2025. After the corporate buttoned-up style of AW24, menswear is chilling out and having fun, focusing on fine details and exceptional fabrics — and displaying a continued obsession with technical pieces for the outdoors.
Milan Fashion Week (MFW) featured blockbuster shows from Prada, Gucci, Fendi and JW Anderson, a menswear debut by Moschino’s Adrian Appiolaza, a Milan debut by London star Martine Rose and a surprise collection drop from Valentino’s new creative director Alessandro Michele.
Here are the key takeaways.
From raffia to embroidery: An artisanal mood
A big talking point was Valentino creative director Alessandro Michele’s surprise debut — a drop of Valentino for Spring 2025, on the morning that his Gucci successor, Sabato De Sarno, presented a second menswear show.
The Valentino collection features both menswear and womenswear and many Michele signatures, from heavy pastel layering, ornate embroidery and embellishment to stacked jewellery and accessories, aligning with a mood much noted this season that focuses on texture, embroidery and other artisanal techniques.
“The customer responds well to [artisanal techniques], as they add to the value of the piece and are often a talking point for a brand or collection, such as Oasi Linen from Zegna,” says Sophie Jordan, menswear buying director at Mytheresa. “Men are embracing this as brands are smart in offering these new fabrications in a trusted shape the customer knows, so it’s a low-risk way to update their wardrobe.”
For some, the artisanal mood emphasises the natural world. Finishing off MFW, at Zegna’s show (closed by brand ambassador and actor Mads Mikkelsen), attendees entered the venue via a tunnel, with sand underfoot. At the end of the tunnel, the brand announced that it’s aiming for all Oasi fibres to be traceable by 2025.
At Appiolaza’s Moschino menswear debut on Friday, the designer took a trip to the beach, evoking seaside fun with raffia and beaded fringing. Raffia-style pieces were also in evidence at Dolce Gabbana in the form of boxy shirts, brogues and super-sized beach bags. At Fendi, perforated beige handbags were fashioned out of recycled-leather offcuts from the atelier. Gucci featured intricate embroidery and embellishments, with its cult branding limited to accessories and footwear, “allowing the designs to speak for themselves”, says Simon Longland, buying director at Harrods.
Buttoned-down and undone
Last season, Milan’s menswear designers proposed formal clothes in fresh contexts. For SS25, the emphasis is on looseness and undoneness, most notably at Prada where last season’s suited-and-booted office worker has loosened his tie and headed out to party.
Guests in the Prada showspace were greeted by a white house, raised up in a corner of the room, with a thumping baseline and flashing lights bursting through the windows. On the catwalk, suits were visibly creased, printed floral shirts messily untucked and shirt and jacket collars starched at unexpected angles, as if the wearer had slept fully clothed. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons like to make fashion feel lived-in. “We wanted it to be already alive,” says Mrs Prada, backstage after the show. “As if they’re clothes that you already live with. Not too constricted by striving for [the] architectural or conceptual.”
“I have seen a ‘lightness’ to the season with a more relaxed approach; looser fits and softer fabrications but overall keeping a sophisticated look and feel,” says Mytheresa’s Jordan. “Tailoring is as important as always, but again, I feel there is a softness and fluidity, trousers are pleat-front with a wider fit, blazers are longer line and relaxed and often styled with a spread-collar shirt, which feels fresh and not literal.”
At JW Anderson, beige and gingham shirts hung loose from the bottom of sweaters, layered atop jersey track pants in contrasting pastel tones. Loose-fitting jeans, often with maximalist proportions, were haphazardly tucked into boots (typically one leg in, one leg out). The collection also featured three Guinness-logo jumpers, set to go viral as Anderson’s latest ‘if you know, you know’ piece (similar to his frog shoes and pigeon bag).
Art and fashion are popular bedfellows. Designers were inspired by the wardrobes of artists this season, notably boiler suits: in contrasting colours with heavy zips at Prada, in short monochromatic styles at Gucci, and in long denim styles from Jacob Cohen, a Milan menswear newcomer. Cohen’s models, wearing elevated denim and cotton boiler suits, slowly painted the brand’s logo on the wall over the course of the presentation.
At MSGM’s 15th-anniversary show, people in white coats threw paint at the wall behind the catwalk. It was a direct homage to designer Massimo Giorgetti’s very first collection back in June 2009: at the last minute, he feared his T-shirts and hoodies were too boring and enlisted a friend to cover them with paint, reported Vogue’s Tiziana Cardini.
Innovative techwear, on and off the runway
Milan may be the capital of tailoring, but it is also a hub for technical fashion, playing host to techwear brands such as Stone Island and CP Company, which each held large-scale presentations this season to explain their fabrications and innovations to buyers and editors alike.
Stone Island staged a one-off debut show last season and followed up this time round with a showcase featuring a UV-responsive cream knit (that turns pink when exposed to UV light) and new outerwear using the textile Alcantara (typically used in car upholstery), which has a suede finish with waterproof and insulating properties.
Alcantara is also a favourite of Massimo Osti Studio (MOS), the CP Company offshoot label now on its fourth drop (or chapter). Outerwear legend Osti is the founder of both CP Company and Stone Island (the latter now majority owned by Moncler Group). He launched the eponymous line in January, responding to the enthusiasm for experimental techwear by delivering tight, small edits of innovative textiles.
MOS is actually a relaunch, which came from different directions, according to CP Company CEO Lorenzo Osti. “On one side, I found that relaunching the brand on the market was the right next step in celebrating my father’s career, after having founded the Massimo Osti archive. On the other side, our research and development lab is sitting on a lot of unexploited research and innovation that, for one reason or another, cannot fit into CP Company. We decided to relaunch MOS as the most advanced and experimental brand of the group, where we can test textiles and construction processes and also experiment with distribution models and marketing.”
The outdoors theme extended to some luxury labels, too. Moschino’s survival jacket, a play on an archival piece of the same name, featured exaggerated utilitarian pockets, holding everything from a phone to a water bottle, a book and a magnifying glass. “My version was for urban survival,” Appiolaza says backstage. “Then later came a version for the explorer. The collection was exploring the codes of the house and giving them a twist.”
‘Gorpcore’ was also present at De Sarno’s Gucci, where many looks were paired with slip-on track sole shoes in khaki. Prada featured white utility trousers, with various zips to open vents or to enable the transformation into shorts.
New talents bring new energy
Milan men’s felt more energetic this season, says Jordan, due to the new or emerging names on the schedule. “It was a busier schedule than previous, with brands [like Martine Rose] migrating from London, which added another dynamic to the weekend,” she says.
Rose made her Milan debut with a scaled-up show, straight after Prada on Sunday. Models, each wearing prosthetic noses and long, floor-skimming wigs to obscure their appearances, weaved between scaffolding in fluid outerwear, sportswear-inspired separates and sharply tailored trousers and suits. “I find beauty in a looseness. I’m really inspired by ideas that aren’t particularly finished,” the designer tells Vogue Business pre-show. “I hope that’ll be the feeling that people take from the show.” The designer hopes this Milan moment will help further scale her business, which has grown season after season since securing majority stake investment from Tomorrow in 2021.
Growing menswear label Jordanluca took a different direction for SS25, focusing on a more feminine, softer collection inspired by ballet. The tutus and gowns were a purposeful far cry from the brand’s 2022 piss jeans, that went viral in spring of this year — and had a halo effect on brand sales. “The show last season also felt like a turning point for us,” says co-founder Jordan Bowen ahead of the show, “We’re now growing and changing it up.”
On Sunday, Milan rising star Magliano returned to the schedule, after a guest designer slot at Pitti Uomo last season. The young designer made a political statement for SS25, with prints and embroideries referencing student demonstrations during the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa as well as queer culture via prints of chemsex.
Elsewhere, Italian genderless luxury label Mordecai was one to watch. Launched in 2023 by Moncler alum Ludovico Bruno, it focuses on bringing a technical approach to traditional and heritage pieces, with a buildable collection of loose-fit separates and jackets in a neutral, earthy palette.
“The young or visiting talents in Milan underlined where menswear is headed for me this season,” says Jordan Duddy, fashion editor of Another Man. “They each have a distinct vision, but each presented a fluid, more relaxed and versatile menswear proposition for today’s consumer.”
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